William Stanton Read more February 12, 2022

Laptops are the perfect choice for working on the go, but their relatively small displays can often leave a bit of a hindrance. Hooking up a second, third, or even fourth screen can help give you a little bit of breathing room and make your workload feel much more manageable.

Essentially, having multiple displays means you don’t need to flip between applications on one screen anymore. For example, you can display your email client on your laptop’s native screen and run Photoshop on a bigger external monitor. Maybe you have one monitor dedicated to Slack and another for browsing.

This article explains how to hook up your laptop to your external monitor and configure the display to work the way you want. There are also details on resolution limitations for various connections and advice on finding the correct adapter if your video inputs don’t match.

If you own a Windows laptop, connecting external displays should be very easy to do. The first step is to determine which type of cable you need. Most modern laptops have an HDMI, DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort, or USB Type-C port.

If the inputs and outputs on the monitor and laptop match, you can purchase a cable, such as this simple HDMI cable on Amazon, and hook the two together. If the inputs don’t match, or you’ve tried connecting your PC to your monitor and have no picture, scroll down for more information on adapters and converters.

Once you’ve got your cable, plug it into the monitor and laptop, the Windows side of things is straightforward.

Users of Windows 7 need to follow a different procedure than Windows 8, 8.1, or 10 to duplicate or extend their display.

Note: If your monitor doesn’t display your laptop output automatically after all this, it may be necessary to use the monitor’s controls to switch to the correct input manually.

By default, Windows positions the laptop’s built-in screen to the left and the external monitor to the right, meaning you have to move the cursor off the internal screen’s right-hand side when navigating to the monitor. If you have things the other way around, you’ll need to slightly adjust the position since the monitor appears stationed on the left side.

You’ll notice that Windows doesn’t restrict you to just left and right configurations; you can also arrange the monitor so that it sits above your laptop or below it. You can also fine-tune the screens’ position so that various windows and other items span the two screens and match up.

Don’t fear if you have DVI and HDMI, HDMI and DisplayPort, or even VGA and any of the above connections. You can still connect multiple screens using a dual-purpose cable, such as DVI-to-VGA, HDMI-to-DVI, or some other adapter or converter.

An increasing number of laptops use a USB Type-C socket to complicate matters further, carrying data, video, and charging capabilities. USB Type-C is brilliant, but it’s not always obvious what the port on your laptop can and cannot do. Indeed, some devices only support USB 2.0 connectivity and power transfer and won’t carry a video signal at all. In contrast, others offer USB 3.0 but won’t let you plug the connection into a monitor. Alas, there’s no way of telling beyond trying it out or checking the specifications for the USB controller hardware your laptop uses.

If you attempt to use that same cable to connect your laptop to your monitor, you’ll be out of luck. Again, there’s no way of telling beyond trial and error or buying a specifically video-compatible cable.

Fortunately, cables are pretty cheap, even though USB Type-C is a relatively newer standard. If you need an HDMI to USB Type-C adaptor, for instance, you can get a low-cost converter on Amazon if you don’t mind attaching a small USB Type-C to HDMI adapter to the end of your Type-C cable.

However, it’s best to purchase a multi-adapter instead, which gives you much more flexibility. These connectors are a bit more expensive than one-to-one adapters, but they won’t break the bank, and they will provide you with connections for your monitor, your standard USB accessories, and power input all in one.

There is another factor to your choice of cable or adapter, however. Depending on your secondary monitor’s specifications, some video connections may not be capable of displaying images at the monitor’s native resolution.

Although you can still connect the monitor as a secondary display, you may find that the screen gets stretched or appears more blurry than it should be. With many affordable consumer monitors offering WQHD (2,560 x 1,440 pixel) or 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixel) resolutions, it’s worth making the right choice to get the best quality on your particular device.

Although there’s no hard limit to the maximum resolution of a VGA connection, laptop graphics cards often top out around 2,048 x 1,536. It’s worth knowing that images can look softer and less sharp via a VGA cable as it’s an analog signal rather than a digital connection.

A DVI connection is a better choice, partly because it’s a digital connection, but you still have to be careful. If you want to use resolutions above 1,920 x 1,200, you’ll need both a dual-link DVI cable and a dual-link compatible connector on your laptop. Take a look at the image below to see the difference between a dual-link (left) and a single-link cable (right).

Similarly, although the HDMI 1.3 standard added support for monitors and displays that stretch beyond the popular Full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080 pixels), and HDMI 1.4 and HDMI 2.0 now support up to 4K resolutions, both your laptop and monitor will need to support the standard for the connection to work. If you have a portable computer with an HDMI 1.2 or earlier port, you won’t be able to push the secondary monitor resolution higher than 1,920 x 1,200.

DisplayPort is the most flexible connection of the bunch (as is USB Type-C, since it’s merely a carrier for a DisplayPort or HDMI connection). Even the older DisplayPort 1.1 standard supports up to 4K resolutions at 30Hz. That specification limits the onscreen framerate to a jerky 30fps. So, while movies look fine, it isn’t suitable for 4K gaming. DisplayPort 1.2 adds support for 4K at a smooth 60Hz refresh rate.

The most recent standard, DisplayPort 1.3, supports 8K (7,680 x 4,320 pixels). With some laptops and graphics cards, different outputs will support different resolutions and refresh rates. Therefore, it’s worth checking to see which connection is most capable before buying any cables or adapters. If you don’t get the right one, you may end up with a lower resolution and refresh rate produced by a monitor capable of delivering better quality.

If you’ve got a recent Apple laptop or desktop with a Thunderbolt connection, then bear in mind that you can use a ‘mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort’ cable (or a DisplayPort adapter) to connect to any compatible monitor—the monitor doesn’t need to have a Thunderbolt input. You can pick up a ‘mini DisplayPort-to-DisplayPort’ cable for a few dollars on Amazon.

In many cases, connecting two (or more) monitors to your laptop is as simple as plugging them into several video outputs. Depending on your portable PC’s age and the graphics chipset inside, there may be hardware limitations that prevent you from doing so. Older laptops may only support two displays: the laptop display and a secondary monitor. Newer models may allow as many as three external displays. Other devices, such as Ultrabooks, hybrids, and tablets, may be limited by only having one display output or possibly none.

However, there are ways to add an extra monitor even if you’ve already used all the connections or your laptop doesn’t have a working video output.

For devices with a DisplayPort 1.2 connection, there are a couple of options. Firstly, you can buy a DisplayPort hub that splits your single connection into multiple outputs. These splitters aren’t cheap, but they allow an available DisplayPort connection to power two 2,560 x 1,600 monitors and a third 1,920 x 1,200 display simultaneously. Another option is buying a monitor with daisy-chain functionality: compatible monitors use a DisplayPort output at the rear to allow you to connect multiple monitors via a single DisplayPort connection.

Even if you’ve got an older laptop or a device without any working video connections, all you need is a spare USB port to add another display. There is a variety of reasonably priced USB to DVI, VGA, or HDMI converters on the market, which will allow you to add an extra monitor. You may need drivers for Windows 7 and earlier, but Windows 8 devices should pick them up automatically.

Whatever you decide to do, make sure to think about the resolution issue we mentioned earlier when connecting multiple monitors. For instance, if you want to run a 4K monitor and a 1,920 x 1,080 monitor simultaneously, make sure to link the 4K monitor to the video connection, which will allow the highest, and ideally native, resolution to get used. Get them the wrong way, and you won’t get the best out of your display.

In closing, whether you’re connecting multiple monitors to your laptop for work or streaming movies to a bigger monitor, there are several ways to accomplish the task. Connecting various monitors directly to a laptop has never been easier. Just follow the instructions above, and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Were you able to connect your monitors? Did you run into issues? Share your experience in the comments below.

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